In case you hadn\’t noticed, C-VILLE Weekly has a new website. And yes, folks, we are very, very proud of it. I know that in the past I\’ve given other unsuspecting sites grief about their poor design or oversights in the useful information department (charlottesville.org 1.0, I\’m looking at you) when, all the while, my home team website left a lot to be desired. However, while I\’ve been known to bite the hand that feeds me on occasion, in this case I somehow managed to keep my choppers to myself.

Scottsville, 20 minutes south of Charlottesville on Route 20, is known for its small-town charm. But that doesn’t mean the development craze that has been hitting Albemarle and the surrounding counties hasn’t had any effect on this town of 600 residents. According to Mayor Steve Phipps, the biggest issue facing his town right now is traffic, specifically from the rapidly growing counties of Fluvanna and Buckingham.

The 15-year-old Albemarle County High School student found guilty of plotting with three other teens to use explosives on two area high schools has been allowed by an Albemarle County Circuit Court judge to return home to his family. Reached for comment, neither the teen\’s mother, nor his lawyer, David Bruns, would comment on why the court decided that the 15-year-old couldâor shouldâgo home, because the case remains closed to the public. The teen\’s mother did say that her son is home permanently, and that she and her husband have plans to home-school him. She says that he needs to catch up on the last quarter of 10th grade since he\’s fallen behind due to his legal woes. He will have the summer off and then, his mother says, will continue his 11th grade studies at home in the fall. She also says that, “He\’s doing great. He\’s doing very well,” and that both she and her husband are pleased with the outcome.

After two weeks of testimony in federal court, a jury came back with a guilty verdict for Louis Antonio Bryant on Monday morning, May 22. The ringleader of the Charlottesville gang the Westside Crew, otherwise known as Project Crud, was found guilty of racketeering and one count of attempted murder. He faces life in prison.

The 17 students who took over UVA\’s Madison Hall for four days in April are off the hook on their trespassing charges. On Monday, May 23, Judge Robert Downer in Charlottesville General District Court dismissed the charges against all the students. He said that because UVA Chief Financial Officer Leonard Sandridge had told the students that they had five minutes to vacate the building, and yet UVA police began arresting students before that five minutes was up, that the case had to be dismissed on lack of grounds. The judge also said that the University had been sending mixed messages to the students, by agreeing to have a dialogue with them, then having them arrested.

Six months ago, in our “2006 Development Forecast,” C-VILLE reported not on how Charlottesville and Albemarle have already changed, but on how our home was going to change. Hours spent adding up rows and rows of numbers from the City and County’s planning offices yielded startling totals: a potential for 18,725 new residential units and 6,235,451 more square feet of commercial space on the way in the next decade or so.

Yes, Charlottesville there is a god. How do I know? I know because the City of Charlottesville finally has (drum roll, please!) a new website. I know, I know: You don\’t believe me. You\’re rubbing your eyes as if what you read could not possibly be true. Your mouth is hanging open in disbelief. You\’re rethinking long-held beliefs about the existence of Santa Claus. And yet? It\’s true, I tell you: TRUE!

It’s always nice to have at least some idea where the money is going. Or, in the case of most UVA students, where their parents’ money is going. Lately, this has proven to be the source of some concern to a group of UVA students who don’t want to see any of their families’ money invested in companies that do business in Sudan, or with the Sudanese government.

In February, Jeremy Harvey left Charlottesville on the midnight train to Las Vegas. The shady local banker (and past C-VILLE cover boy) left his girlfriend and her children to remarry his ex-wife, 81-year-old newspaper heiress Betty Scripps. Now, however, it appears that Harvey, 62, has left Scripps after just three months. According to multiple sources familiar with his status, Harvey is back in town and living in his Colthurst mini-mansion with the girlfriend he demurred for Scripps. Scripps and Harvey were married for the first time from 1997 to 2004.

Now that Charlottesville police have confirmed that an attack near Friendship Court in late April, which left one teen so badly beaten he had to get two metal plates inserted into his face, was the work of the Bloods street gang, Charlottesville is left wondering how and why the Bloods came to town. For a little perspective on who the Bloods are and how they operate, C-VILLE called national gang expert and consultant Robert Walker with the organization Gangs Or Us. Here’s some of what he had to say.âNell Boeschenstein

When 180 acres are flooded to make way for the long-planned Ragged Mountain Reservoir expansion, the city will lose acres of public hiking trails. City Councilor Kevin Lynch wants replacement public land, but finding a location could prove tricky.

Faced with a life-changing experience, people can change. That was the central argument of Kerry Cook's defense attorney during a three-day trial that unfolded in Charlottesville Circuit Court last week. On May 11, the jury sentenced Cook to nine months in prison for resisting arrest during a domestic dispute at Friendship Court back in August 2004. The fight ended when one of the cops shot Cook in the stomach, leaving him near death and in a coma for three weeks. Cook faced two other assault charges in the incident, but the jurors could not reach a decision on those charges. Cook, who has been in jail for 21 months on separate charges, will now serve another nine.

On May 5, Earl Washington got his due. After a two-week civil case in federal court, a jury awarded Washington $2.25 million, plus attorneys fees and costs, for the nine and a half years he spent on death row for a crime he did not commit.

An attorney for Kurt Kroboth, the former investment banker accused of donning a vampire mask and attempting to murder his estranged wife back in November 2004, has filed a motion calling into question the constitutionality of the sentence his client was handed on May 9. Judge William Shelton sentenced Kroboth to 25 years for attempted murder, with all but 10 years suspended. The defense had recommended a sentence of two and a half to five years; the prosecution recommended four and a half to eight years.

The federal drug and conspiracy case against Louis Antonio Bryant, the alleged drug dealer and ringleader of local gang the Westside Crew, continues into its second week of testimony on Monday, May 15. The first week prosecutors brought to the stand numerous police investigators, as well as former associates of Bryant\’s who had dealt with or bought drugs from him.

On May 9, The Virginia Quarterly Reviewâa four-man publishing operation run out of the University of Virginiaâwon two National Magazine Awards, the industry\’s highest honor. VQR won for General Excellence in the under 100,000 distribution category, as well as for fiction, a category in which they were pitted against such tough competitors as The Atlantic Monthly and McSweeney\’s.

Waving American flags, singing hymns in Spanish and English, and holding signs that declared “We struggle for what is right with dignity” and “I am an immigrant, not a delinquent,” about 350 local Hispanics and community members gathered outside the County Office Building on McIntire Road at 6:30pm on May 1 to tell Charlottesville loud and clear: “We\’re here, and we matter.”

In late November, after 10 days of testimony and arguments in federal court, jurors were preparing to go into deliberations in the RICO trial against four alleged members of the Westside Crew (a.k.a. Project Crud), a local gang.

At about 11pm on Thursday, May 4, Bishop Rufus Hayes of the Charlottesville Church of Christ was awakened to a telephone call telling him that his church was burning.
By the time he arrived at the church he’s led for 17 years, flames had engulfed the Fifth Street building’s smaller sanctuary and offices, and firefighters were working to keep the main sanctuary from succumbing to the fire.

On a recent sky-blue spring day Monticello hosted a gaggle of reporters atop Montalto, the mountain across from Monticello that the Thomas Jefferson Foundation snatched from the poised paws of hovering developers last year when the property came up for sale. The occasion for mountaintop sunning? On May 1, twice-daily tours of the property began, continuing whenever the weather is fine through October.

Friends can sometimes turn against each other at the slightest provocation. A 15-year-old Albemarle County student learned this cruel truth the hard way while walking near Friendship Court late Friday, April 21.

The trial of Dale Anthony Crawford, a former Manassas car salesman, was scheduled to start May 1. However, a last-minute crisis will leave Crawford awaiting trial a little longer. Crawford’s defense attorney Liz Murtagh was diagnosed with a serious illness April 26; the trial will be rescheduled next week once Murtagh knows the course of her treatment.